The Meta Blog
Writer Don Labriola gave me an idea when he told an insider’s listserv of tech experts he bookmarked my blog. I was flattered, of course, and I wondered what company I was in, i.e. what other blogs he had bookmarked that I’d like to see. Sort of like social networking of people’s blogs. The thing is, if it’s anything like my bookmarks for favorite websites, no one but me and my staff know what the bookmarks represent because they are cryptic and are organized by an internal hierarchy of our research subjects…unless I tagged them with descriptors. Or would it be enough just to know they were Don’s favorites, that his discretion alone spoke volumes, and the rest was my discovery?
I picked up on something from a blog (sorry, I forgot to note whose) about Webjay, a non-profit site that had formed to let people recommend and link free MP3s on the web. There was no bio of the recommender or even real names, no review like on Amazon, just a list with links and a genre tag. Unencumbered by any recording contracts with any labels, major or indie, I listed a couple songs Wes Garner recorded of my first jazz vocalist gig in 2002 that were sitting on my diva website so I could see in a week if that boosted traffic at the site. It works for Janis Ian, so who knows. Unlike those highly posed, touched-up studio pics that make it impossible for you to not disappoint anyone seeing you in person, people could like me even more in real life after given how much my sound has improved since then.
One of the amazing things about humanity is the range of behavior between good faith and paranoia when it comes to letting your candle shine out from under the bushel. I was at a dinner party given by a friend who is working on his first book, sort of in the social science area, and as the sun set over the distant range 100 miles off, where this former gubernatorial candidate, dot.com refugee, and social activist pretended to survey the grounds of his secluded, verdant, hilltop estate, he passed me a sheath of papers, whispering that it was the first draft — could I put it safely in my bag and read it later. I took the stack but suggested it might be easier if he posted the chapters on a website. He was completely unwilling to let anyone have the chance to take his property before it was “safely” published. I argued that posting it and copyrighting it was publishing it, and if he wanted a little more definition he could use a Creative Commons license. Ideas are more powerful when they are commonly held, so he could look at any plagiarism as a successful outcome. After all, was this about affecting change or raising his caché on the lecture circuit? He knew enough to realize he wouldn’t make money on his first book, but self-publishing on the net was not going to feel successful, of that he was certain.
Whatever, the argument about self-publishing begs the question, how is mass culture created anyway? Do we listen to a musician because they are talented, or because they are promoted? Would we know how to tell raw talent if we heard it in a song on a website that was not slick or on the cover of teen magazine or in rotation on MTV? Or are we like my French lawyer who never goes into a restaurant that is not crowded?
So take the recommendations of other music fans from Webjay (I’m listed under ‘popular’ today, go figure), add the meta data from musicbrainz, a community effort to describe songs, collect traffic data to let others know what’s popular, and voila! Musicians who want to get paid can add paypal to their sites. Anyone promoting anarchy in the record industry could effect positive change with a combined effort such as this.
posted by julia b schwerin